Paris Ransom

by Charles Rosenberg

  After I hung up, I prepared the search warrant. I initially considered writing it out narrowly, to focus on a search for a specific book in a particular hotel room. Then, after thinking about it, I instead prepared one that called for a search of the entire hotel to look for the book or anything related to it or the kidnapping.

  The police car picked me up thirty minutes later. This would, I remarked to myself, be the first search in many years where I’d accompanied the police myself. The young policeman who spoke English—a Lieutenant Joly—was the driver, and two more cops, both armed with handguns, rode in the back seat. I assumed that force would not be necessary, but you never knew. Some people tended to have a seriously adverse reaction to police going through their personal stuff.

  We were at the hotel within an hour of my call to Captain Bonpere.

  I was only mildly surprised, when we arrived, to find the general and an aide standing in the lobby, talking to a man I assumed to be the hotel owner. As Professor James had predicted, the general had gotten there first.

  The hotel owner had a narrow, pinched face, a turned-down mouth, protruding ears, and fingernails that needed cutting. I had tried to train myself, as a judge, not to let appearances prejudice my attitudes toward people, but human nature dies hard. I had the feeling, even before the guy opened his mouth, that I was not going to like him.

  I was not disappointed. He looked at me and said, “Who the devil are you?”

  “I’m Investigating Judge Roland de Fournis. We’re here to serve a search warrant.” I nodded to Lieutenant Joly, who handed the man the warrant. The owner looked at it, shoved it back at Joly and said, “I need my lawyer to look at this before I agree.”

  I stepped forward, got up in his face and said, “Unfortunately, Monsieur . . . I don’t think I have learned your name. What is it?”

  “Crépin.”

  “Alors, Monsieur Crépin, this is not a situation in which you get to wait for your lawyer while we delay the search. You can call your lawyer, and if he gets here while the search is going on, fine. And if he doesn’t, that is also fine. Now we are going to begin with room 406. May I have the key, please?”

  “I don’t want to give you the key.”

  “If you don’t, Lieutenant Joly can go back to his squad car, get a crowbar and break in the door. Your choice.”

  He went behind the desk and handed me the key.

  “Monsieur Crépin,” I asked, “is there any guest staying in that room at the moment?”

  “No.”

  “Good, we will go up.”

  The general said, “I will go, too.”

  “I’m sorry, mon général, but this is a search by the court and police assisting the court, and you are neither.”

  “That is outrageous.”

  “If you ask politely, Jean, perhaps I will permit you to accompany us.” I had intentionally dropped his title and called him by his first name in front of strangers—an unforgiveable insult, which is what I intended.

  I waited a moment to see what he would do.

  “Alright,” he said. “May I accompany your search?”

  “Certainly.”

  At that very moment, Professor James and her attorney, Maître Bertrand, rushed into the lobby.

  “I am so sorry we are late,” Maître Bertrand said in French. “We were delayed by traffic. Are you doing a search here?”

  “Yes.”

  “May we accompany you? I think my client might be able to be of use.”

  “Why not? We will make this a search party.”

  In the end, all of us—the professor, her lawyer, the general, the three policemen and the hotel owner—went up to the 4e étage, some via the elevator, some by the stairs. I put the key in the lock and opened the door to room 406. Lieutenant Joly and I went in. I asked the others to wait in the hall. We looked around but could see no obvious safe or place that a safe might be hidden. I asked the lieutenant to ask the professor and her lawyer to come into the room. I didn’t ask for the general. I was enjoying letting him stand in the hallway.

  “Will you translate, Lieutenant Joly?”

  “Of course.”

  “So, Professor,” I said, “when you searched in here, did you see anything that looked like a hiding place for a safe?”

  I waited for her answer to be translated back to me.

  “No, but it was dark and, as I said before, all I really had time to search was the closet. There might have been something in there that could be a safe. May I look again now to be sure?”

  “Certainly. But let me look inside first.” I stuck my head in. The only thing I saw was a man’s suit hanging on a hanger. “Go ahead,” I said.

  She went into the closet while her attorney and I continued to inspect the room. Lieutenant Joly got down on his knees and looked carefully at the floorboards. “I think that it’s very cleverly disguised,” he said, “but it looks like there is a crack here that might be the edge of a trapdoor.”

  I got down on my knees—which creaked as I bent down—and examined the crack. “Get the hotel owner in here.”

  Lieutenant Joly went into the hallway and fetched the owner.

  “Monsieur,” I said, when he arrived, “do you know if there is a disguised trapdoor here in the floor?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Eh bien, if that’s the case, we’ll just take the crowbar to that thin, strange crack on the floor to see if we can rip it open, because it certainly looks like a door. And if it’s damaged, I’m sure the French State in all its majesty will compensate you. Eventually.”

  “Alright, alright,” he said. “It is a trapdoor. The ring pulls to lift it up are under the two thin floor boards at right-angles to each end of the crack. If you pry the floorboards up with your fingernails, you’ll see.”

  Lieutenant Joly did as he suggested and, sure enough, two ring pulls appeared. Joly grabbed them with both hands and tugged. A door came away, revealing a square hole in the floor that was perhaps half a meter deep and half a meter across. At the bottom were five books, stacked one on top of the other, each covered in a transparent plastic protector.

  While we were working on the trapdoor, Professor James had walked up to look over our shoulders. When Joly opened it, she looked in and shouted something.

  “She is saying that those volumes are the victim’s copy of the book,” Joly said.

  “Ah, bon. Lieutenant, did you bring plastic gloves and evidence bags?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Please pick those five volumes up and put each one inside an evidence bag” I said. “We’ll have to take them to the crime lab for both fingerprint and DNA analysis.”

  “I will do it,” Joly said.

  The professor peered into the hole. “Lieutenant, do you see that small triangular piece of plastic there, just a few centimeters on a side?” she asked. “It’s probably just a tiny piece of plastic book cover that has flaked off and is of no significance. But could you be sure to bag it, too? And before you put it in the bag, I’d like to look at it.”

  “The professor would also like to look at that small piece of plastic,” Joly said, pointing to it.

  “I have no problem with that,” I said.

  Joly took the plastic gloves from his front pocket, skinned them on, and took a bunch of folded-up plastic evidence bags out of his back pocket. He reached into the hole and deftly lifted up the small piece of plastic between thumb and forefinger. He held it up for me to look at first, and then showed the professor. She shrugged, and he dropped it into one of the Ziploc bags. Next he lifted up the top volume and was about to put it in an evidence bag when the professor said something to him.

  “Now, Monsieur le juge, she wants to check out the inscription on the first volume,” Joly said.

  “I would not mind seeing it myself. They told me that it
is on the title page.”

  Joly opened the first volume, flipped to the title page and held it up. There was no inscription.

  I spun around and looked at the professor, who was talking excitedly.

  “She says,” Joly interpreted, “that if Oscar left the original here, someone must have swapped it for this one. She says the general is her number-one suspect.”

  That seemed far-fetched to me, and I would need to question her about why she thought so. But since the general was standing out in the hallway, I thought I’d ask him a key question along those same lines before he got away.

  I walked outside and said, “General, were you here the night that the professor broke into this hotel room?”

  “No.”

  “Were any of your people—whoever they are—here?”

  “No. What did you find?”

  “Some books. But not the books, apparently.”

  I noticed that the weasel-faced owner of the hotel had just emerged from the room and come out into the hallway. “Could you remind me of your name again, Monsieur?” I said. “I’m embarrassed to say I have forgotten it.”

  “Crépin.”

  “Ah, yes, Monsieur Crépin. I think I have something for you.”

  I had, as a precaution, brought with me several summonses, which were folded up in my back pocket. I had filled each of them in with everything except the name of the witness and the date of the appearance. I withdrew a summons from my pocket and asked the general if he had a pen, since I’d forgotten mine.

  “Of course,” he said, and handed me his.

  “May I borrow your back for a moment, General? I need something to write on.”

  He looked nonplussed, but turned around anyway. I filled in Monsieur Crépin’s name on the summons, together with the next day’s date and an appointment for ten thirty in the morning. I handed it to Monsieur Crépin, who took his reading glasses out of his pocket and read it.

  “Tomorrow? Isn’t that too soon? Am I not permitted more time to find and consult a lawyer?”

  “Under normal circumstances, yes, but I have declared this a situation of urgency since someone’s life and safety is at stake. So you must comply, I’m afraid. You have plenty of time to find a lawyer and, in any case, they are all over the courthouse. I will see you tomorrow.”

  Everyone had by then emerged from the room, and Lieutenant Joly was holding the evidence bag with the book’s five volumes in it.

  “Lieutenant,” I said, “I am declaring this room a crime scene and would appreciate it if you would tape it off and post a guard. I am afraid, as a result, that the rest of you must now leave. Except for you and your client, Maître Bertrand. I would like a word with you.”

  After the others had grudgingly left, I said, “Maître Bertrand, I would like to save the extra time it takes for a translation. Can you just ask your client why she suspects the general of having swapped out the book?”

  He spoke to the professor for a moment and said, “She says the general collects rare books himself, that he has been tapping her phone, that he hurried to get here before her and that he came alone. She thinks that if you had not showed up, he would have found the book himself and taken it without telling anyone.”

  “Could not the same thing be said of her?”

  He translated, and I saw her face harden.

  “She says that the difference is that it is her friend who was kidnapped and will be released in exchange for the book.”

  She had a point.

  “Maître Bertrand, I have a question for you,” I said.

  “Yes?”

  “When you told me this long histoire of what has happened here, you said your client was surprised by the police in the hotel room she had broken into.”

  “That is my understanding.”

  “How did the hotel owner know that she had broken into the room?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Does she know?”

  “I’ll ask her.” He turned to her, then turned back to me. “She has no idea, but she says the hotel owner told her after she was arrested that ‘he knew she was up to no good.’”

  “Where was her room that night?”

  “It was two doors down.” He pointed to room 406.

  “This is all very interesting. Could you and your client return to my court tomorrow at 10:45?”

  “Yes, but isn’t that the same time you asked Monsieur Crépin to appear?”

  “No, he is coming fifteen minutes earlier. I am thinking it might be useful after he has been there a little while to have a face-to-face between Monsieur Crépin and the professor, where I can question them jointly, under oath, and find out what really happened the night she was arrested. It could be very informative.” Not to mention entertaining.

  As Maître Bertrand and his client were leaving, I added, out of earshot of the hotel owner, “By the way, please don’t come early. And when you get there, I’d appreciate your just sitting on the bench outside my office without announcing yourselves.”

  Face-offs were even more entertaining if they were a surprise to at least one of the parties.

  CHAPTER 34

  I was in my office bright and early the next morning. I spent an hour doing a little Internet research. It’s amazing what you can learn in a short time. Not long after I finished my research, my greffier came in.

  “Bonjour, Marie,” I said.

  “Bonjour, Monsieur le juge. You look quite happy this morning. Even if you did not get to go to Provence.”

  “Yes. I am planning a face-to-face.”

  “Ah, you love those. I do not if they become heated. They are hard to transcribe.”

  “I will try to keep this one not so hot. By the way, I’d appreciate it if you could call the translator and ask her to stand by since I’m going to be taking testimony again today from the professor. Please tell her just to wait on the bench outside with the witness.”

  “Of course.”

  Monsieur Crépin arrived a few minutes before his ten thirty appointment. I was pleased that he had not brought a lawyer. All the better to make him feel at home, comfortable and, if things went well, off his guard. I offered him coffee, which he accepted. The greffier administered the oath, and we began.

  My first questions were, as usual, easy ones, designed to put him at ease—name, age, occupation, a bit about the hotel and how he came to own it. Then I started to get into it with him.

  “Monsieur Crépin, which room was Professor James in?”

  “She was in 404.”

  “And Oscar Quesana was in 406, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is there a room between them?”

  “Yes. Number 405.”

  “Who was staying, if anyone was, in 405?”

  “I do not recall.”

  “Do you recall if there was a guest in that room at all?”

  “I do not. Sorry.”

  “No need to be sorry as long as you are testifying honestly.”

  Usually when I said that, witnesses went out of their way to assure me of their honesty. I noted that Monsieur Crépin did not.

  “So it might have been empty or it might have been in use?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have records that would show who was in the room that night?”

  “Yes.”

  “If I lent you my computer, would you be able to access them?”

  “I am not very computer literate, so probably not.”

  “You do not have a smart phone or a tablet or anything like that?”

  “No, just one of those old flip phones that makes phone calls. That’s about it.”

  “Monsieur Crépin, is it correct that the police caught the professor in Monsieur Quesana’s room?”

  “Yes.”

  “
How did they know she was in there?”

  “I called them and told them she was.”

  “That was quite late at night, wasn’t it?”

  “I suppose.”

  “How did you know she had entered Monsieur Quesana’s room?”

  “I was just suspicious of her, so I went up to the fourth floor to look.”

  “To look at what?”

  “To guard the room.”

  “You had a premonition she would enter that room?”

  “Yes.”

  “Based on what?”

  “I looked her up on the Internet after she checked in, and I saw that on her law school profile, where it said ‘fun facts about Professor James,’ it said that she knew how to pick locks.”

  “I thought you were not good at the Internet or computers.”

  He had begun to look uncomfortable, and I noticed that he was licking his lips. I asked him if he needed a glass of water. It was an old technique of mine. Witnesses who accepted often had trouble holding the glass without their hand shaking, especially if they were lying. Those who didn’t accept seemed to be made nervous by the request itself, as if I was asking because I could actually see that their mouth had gone dry with fear.

  He declined the water, then said, “Eh, I can, Monsieur le juge, do some things on the computer.”

  “Do you research all of your hotel guests?”

  “Yes. It is a good idea. You never know who is going to show up.”

  “When you saw that she knew how to pick locks, what made you think she was likely to pick a lock in your hotel?”

  “Just a suspicion.”

  “When you went up to guard the room, as you put it, did you hide someplace so you could watch the room?”

  “No, I just more or less patrolled the hotel, making sure to go by that floor frequently to be sure she wasn’t doing something bad. The hotel is my only asset, and so I cannot be too careful.”

  “Were you there when she actually picked the lock?”

  “I was just down the hall, in a dark area. I could see what she was doing.”

  “So it was just happenstance that you were there watching the moment she entered Monsieur Quesana’s room?”

  “Yes.”